Rope Enough (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 1)

by Oliver Tidy

  ‘Cigarettes. He cleaned out several racks.’

  ‘Really? When I took a look around last night it was only the,’ Romney leaned over the counter to peer at the display behind the man, ‘the Marlboro Lights that were empty.’

  Patel bristled. ‘What are you suggesting, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that you consider the details of your insurance claim very carefully before submitting it, Mr Patel. Insurance fraud is a serious offence. Do you sell condoms?’

  The manager went from rising indignation to bewilderment at the policeman’s change of tack. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Is that a problem, also, or are you asking as a customer?’

  Marsh turned away to hide her smirk.

  ‘Where are they?’ asked the policeman. Patel indicated an area behind a display of biscuits. Romney walked over and picked up a box. ‘And this is the only brand you sell?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Patel. ‘If you’re looking for something a little more specialised, or in the novelty line, there is a shop in the precinct that I understand carries a wider selection.’

  Romney eyed the man severely but could see no sign he was making sport of him. He replaced the packet. ‘Good day to you, Mr Patel.’

  Romney led them out of the shop. Marsh hung back from his field of vision fighting the desire she had to grin. ‘Make a note, Sergeant,’ said Romney, ‘our attacker likes his Marlboro Lights and the garage only sells Zeus condoms. Have a word with forensics; see what brand of condom that part of the packet they found under the table came from. If it’s not Zeus, it shows he came prepared and lends more weight to our theory that the rape was pre-meditated. And when Mr Patel’s insurance claim details find their way into out department I want to know. Understand?’

  *

  It was late afternoon by the time they arrived back at the station. To Marsh it had seemed like dusk for most of the miserable grey day. Back in CID, Romney discovered that a wider search of the area surrounding the garage had recovered no condoms, used or otherwise, and nothing else that jumped out at the searchers as being possible ephemera from the incident. The cable ties that had been used to restrain the victim could be bought off the shelf in quantities ranging from individually to by the box and were available at three electrical wholesalers in Dover and both of the large DIY stores. Finally, DC Grimes reported that both men whose prints had been recovered from the counter at the garage had freely admitted to visiting the garage in the day for fuel and both had solid alibis for the evening.

  Romney was forced to admit that they had nowhere to go with their enquiries. They sat around going over details, suggesting and dismissing ideas, but were soon forced to accept the reality of their situation: they were stumped. The officer responsible for liaising with the local rag would speak to the paper and in return for a few official words of police comment would secure assurances that the paper would publish a phone number that anyone with any information relating to the incident would be able to contact.

  It only remained for Romney to inform his senior officer of where they were with the case. With nothing else to be done and with the late night that some of them had had the previous evening, he told them to go home.

  *

  Marsh’s exasperations of her small hours’ experience and subsequent lack of sleep were catching up with her. Instead of staying behind to write up Claire Stamp’s statement, she decided to return to her small flat that overlooked the harbour, take a bath, open a bottle of wine and write it up later on her laptop.

  Driving along the windswept seafront towards home, she thought she saw Claire Stamp. A young woman was sitting on a bench under a street light staring out over the seemingly infinite darkness and oneness of sea and sky. In the summer such a sight wouldn’t have attracted a second glance, but on a cold, blustery winter evening on an otherwise deserted stretch of promenade, she cut a lonely and remarkable figure.

  Marsh pulled in at the kerb and having overshot by some distance turned to study the woman. Perhaps she was with someone. She watched her for several minutes caught in two minds. The young woman didn’t move. Marsh huffed, grabbed her overcoat from the rear seat and stepped out onto the path. The wind was biting as it whipped off the open sea and before she reached the woman she was shivering with the cold. She settled herself down next to her. ‘Hello, Claire.’ Claire turned to look at her and Marsh could see sorrow and hurt in her cried-out eyes. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Marsh said, ‘Come and do nothing in the warm with a cup of tea in the cafe over the road.’

  ‘All right,’ said Stamp, surprising Marsh, who had expected a prolonged negotiation in the freezing conditions.

  *

  Marsh set a mug of steaming tea before the young woman.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘For stopping, I mean. You didn’t have to. Thanks for caring.’

  They sipped their drinks in silence for a minute.

  ‘My mum doesn’t have a very high opinion of the police. I’m sorry she was rude today.’

  Marsh shrugged it off. ‘I’m used to it. What are you doing out here, Claire? It’s seriously cold.’

  ‘I needed some fresh air. I needed some space to think.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About where I’m going to go.’

  ‘You’re leaving? What about your flat?’

  ‘That’s not an option anymore.’ She pulled down the high neck of her sweater to reveal angry purple bruising where someone had had their hands around her throat.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Marsh. ‘Who did that to you? Avery?’

  ‘He was drunk and upset.’

  Marsh had to check the anger rising inside her. ‘Don’t defend him. I’ll arrest him myself.’

  ‘I’ll deny it. I won’t press charges.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I forgive him. Like I said: he was drunk and upset.’ She looked Marsh in the eye. ‘He’s been very good to me. Really good. And I forgive him.’

  ‘Nothing gives anyone the right to do something like that to another human being, Claire.’

  Claire smiled at her, a full smile that truly illuminated her features and Marsh felt a pang of terrible sadness for the young woman opposite her. ‘You’re wasting your breath. Anyway, he’s told me to leave the flat and I wouldn’t stay with him now, even if he begged me sober. But he won’t. Seems that what happened to me is too much of an embarrassment for him professionally. He has aspirations you see and it just wouldn’t fit in with his image if it got about that his girl-friend had been raped and he kept her on. It would make him look bad. Weak.’

  Marsh shook her head with a mixture of dismay and disgust. ‘Where will you go? Back to your mother?’

  Claire actually laughed out loud. ‘God no. You met her. I’ve got a sister in Blackpool. She’s on her own at the moment. She’ll put me up.’

  ‘What about the case?’

  ‘How is it going?’

  Marsh opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Claire.

  ‘It’s very early days.’ Claire continued to stare at her expectantly. ‘We’re working hard on what we’ve got, but there isn’t much. He didn’t leave a trace of himself. But that doesn’t mean we’ll give up. The DI is good copper.’

  Claire said, ‘I’ll leave contact details with you. I’ve got until the end of the week to leave the flat and Simon said he’d give me some money.’

  ‘Buying you off?’

  ‘If he thinks that, let him. Like I say, I wouldn’t press charges against him anyway and I’m not staying, so, if he wants to give me some money to ease his conscience, why shouldn’t I take it? I’ve got money put by that I’ve earned.’

  ‘My DI isn’t going to like it.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to lump it.’

  *

  Romney left the station just after six o’clock. Despite the temporary dead end of the case, his mood was
not bad. Superintendent Falkner had agreed that all that could be done was being done. He seemed satisfied with the DI’s summary of the action they had taken. On top of this, the flowers that Romney had organised to be sent to Julie Carpenter at her school to both apologise for his abrupt departure the previous evening and show his regard for her seemed to have had the desired effect.

  It had taken him a long time in his chequered personal life to realise just how effective sending something as simple and cheap as a good bunch of flowers to a woman at her workplace could be. The flowers themselves were always appreciated, as was the gesture and the thought, but the envy generated in a woman’s co-workers was what really counted. That, it seemed, was priceless. The phone-call she made thanking him gave him the opportunity to invite her out for a meal, which she accepted immediately.

  Romney lived alone for most of the time and that suited him. A daughter from his first marriage was in her final year at university and he saw little of her. She had found a life for herself free of her warring parents, refusing to takes sides, happier well out of it. She would visit him when it suited her and she was always welcomed.

  Caught up in the DIY development boom inspired by various television shows, Romney had risked the security of a comfortable, if rather boring, home in the suburbs of Dover that he owned outright to plough it all, plus borrowed money, into financing a project that he believed he’d fallen in love with one summer’s day while cycling around the back lanes of the local countryside. With the passage of time, Romney had come to soberly reflect that, like many things, and people, that wandered into one’s life, it was only the idea of it all that he had fallen in love with. The reality of the work, time and expense registered far less affection.

  What had started out as an exciting dream had, at times, been more of a millstone than anything else, especially in the winter when everything seemed perpetually damp, cold and miserable.

  Builders’ rates being what they were, he had opted to employ his not inconsiderable talent and his spare time to renovate the place. It had been dragging on for nearly two years and he still had a long way to go before he could envisage an end to it.

  In the short time that he’d known Julie Carpenter, he hadn’t yet invited her to see what a monstrous task he’d saddled himself with. He doubted that she would be as impressed as she would be if it were finished. And anyway, crossing such boundaries, he knew from previous bitter experience, brought perils and suggestions of commitment that he was not prepared to engage in, yet. He was quite happy at this stage in their relationship to divide his time between evenings out and her cosy, clean, femininely ordered and fragranced home.

  By eight o’clock he was bowling along the back lanes, showered, changed, hungry and excited at the prospect of later undressing Julie’s firmly curved body and making love with her again as they had on the last two occasions they’d met before the previous night. Rodrigo seeped out of the speakers and everything was good in the world. Except that it wasn’t.

  With a guilty feeling, he thought back to his interview that morning with Claire Stamp. What would she be doing now? Where was the rapist – the man who had succumbed to, what had Marsh called it, the barely suppressed animal desire inside him? Fleetingly, Romney wondered whether that was what he was feeling towards Julie Carpenter: a simple, basic, primitive urge to possess her, to dominate her. But it wasn’t the same, of course. Similarities might exist on a plane of thought, but normal men didn’t go around acting on such impulses by taking women against their will. It was called civilisation. Normal civilised men knew that they had to work for it like most things in life. Play the game. Pay your money and take your chance.

  *

  Detective Inspector Romney next thought of Claire Stamp at about midnight. His evening with Julie had gone as well as he could have hoped. She was beautiful, intelligent, attentive, alluring and he realised that he was feeling fairly smitten with her. The food was excellent, the restaurant service exemplary, the prices outrageous, but the general ambiance of the gastro-pub that he had heard so much about from colleagues lived up to the high recommendations.

  When she invited him in for a coffee as he was dropping her off, he felt an anticipation and exhilaration that had been lamentably infrequent sensations of latter years.

  She pulled him against her inside the doorway in the darkness and probed his mouth with her hot, wet tongue and then, unashamedly, led him up the stairs to her bedroom.

  It was as he was fumbling with the contraceptive wrapping – unable to get a purchase on its oily surface – that he thought of Claire Stamp. Or rather, it was as he put the corner of the square plastic envelope into his mouth and ripped off the top with his teeth that DI Romney thought of her. And then it wasn’t so much Claire Stamp that he thought of as the man who had raped her. Romney wondered if he, too, in his fit of primitive longings to possess the woman spread before him, had found himself unable to gain entry to the little plastic packet and resorted to tearing off the top with his teeth. And whether he, too, would have found the top of the packet stuck inside his mouth, being coated with his saliva and his unique DNA before he carelessly spat it out oblivious of where it might end up and what it might later reveal.

  It was a measure of the power of the urges that Romney was experiencing and giving full vent to that he didn’t interrupt himself, make his apologies, enquire after a pen and paper and write down his epiphany so that he might be guaranteed of reminding himself in the morning to ask forensics to run saliva tests on the little strip of plastic recovered from the crime scene. Instead, he trusted the scrap of priceless intelligence to his less than wonderful memory and for a few intense minutes lost himself.

  ***

  4

  The new day began well enough for Romney. With brief but sincere endearments exchanged with the barely awake naked warmth of Julie Carpenter, he had retrieved his scattered clothes from her bedroom floor, taking a pleasure in their dispersal as testimony to the climax of the previous night. Dressing quickly, he let himself out to stand a moment on the doorstep and drink in the crisp perfect winter’s morning. As if on cue, the new day’s sun, unfettered by cloud, peeped over the battlements of Dover castle, the monument to times past that dominated the town from its raised position and from every approach. It was, he decided, good to be alive.

  *

  Despite returning home for a shower and change of clothes, he arrived at the station in good time. He parked his car and, after checking his watch, opted to visit the small patisserie around the corner and treat himself to a good pastry and proper coffee.

  He entered the station through the public entrance clutching his purchases some ten minutes later. The uniformed sergeant on the front desk greeted him.

  ‘Morning, Dennis. Quiet night?’

  The sergeant’s smile split his fat face. ‘Haven’t you heard, gov?’

  A sense of ominous foreboding hatched inside Romney. ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Fracas in the town last night. All hands on deck. We had to summon uniform from Folkestone and Deal.’

  ‘What? Where? Why?’ The mono-syllabic questions chased each other out of his open mouth.

  ‘Mob of local thuggery turned up at The Castle. Started taking the place apart and whoever they could get their hands on.’

  ‘The Castle?’ said Romney. ‘Is that still run by Kosovans?’ His good mood was evaporating like a shallow puddle on a summer’s day.

  ‘Yes, gov. It would appear to be a racially motivated attack. But no one seems to know what sparked it.’

  I do, thought Romney, guiltily.

  He dumped his pastry, coat and bag in his office before going down to the holding cells to investigate. The duty sergeant looked tired and harassed.

  Romney said, ‘Busy night I hear.’

  ‘Like the good old days, gov, when the squaddies came in to paint the town red before their postings.’

  ‘Mind if I have a look at the visitors’ book.’

  The register
was turned through one-hundred and eighty degrees without further comment and the man went back to the pile of paperwork beside him.

  Romney ran his finger down the list of names, his lips working silently. Simon Avery’s leapt off the page at him, as he feared it would. He counted six names of British origin and ten of an eastern European flavour.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not counting those in the hospital,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Who came off worse?’

  ‘Score draw if you ask me, gov,’ said the seasoned officer. He had an air of a man who’d seen it all before and refused to be moved by any of it.

  ‘Any serious injuries?’

  ‘One of the local lads sustained a nasty knife wound. Nothing life threatening. Apart from that a few broken bones and a concussion or two.’

  The DI nodded. ‘Mind if I take a peek?’

  ‘Most of them are sleeping it off, gov, but feel free.’

  There were six holding cells: three on either side of the corridor. Once upon a time there had been more, but the need was no longer regularly there and storage space for reports in triplicate was always in demand.

  Romney flipped the peep hole on each taking in the forms of men in various reposes. Some slept, others were mumbling, some paced and in the last but one he saw Avery. He was sitting on the hard plastic moulded surface intended for sleeping – although ironically the discomfort afforded by the unforgiving hardness rarely encouraged that – his back to the wall, staring straight at the little aperture as though he had been waiting patiently for someone to come and spy on him. Romney saw that his jacket was torn and bloodied. He felt slightly better, but not as cheerful as if Avery had lost his front teeth. He was also happy that none of the associated paperwork was going to be his problem.

  As soon as he was told of the incident, Romney had suspected that this was some sort of idiotic reprisal for what had been done to Avery’s girlfriend, Claire Stamp. Or, more accurately, if he were quite honest with himself – although the thought made him suddenly hot – what he had suggested to Avery to rile him. If he’d stopped to think about it, he might have expected it. Romney chided himself for his lack of foresight, for not considering the consequences of his foolery; for not having predicted the possibility of such an outcome and forewarning his uniformed colleagues of the chances of a lively night.